Gang massacre in Kenscoff exposes fatal gaps in Haiti's security force
At least 47 people were killed in a gang assault on Kenscoff on 23 August, including 22 executed in a church. The international suppression force remains at a fifth of its authorised strength.
Kenscoff attack kills 47 as pledged security force remains critically understaffed
Kaieteur News reports that on the night of 23 August, the Viv Ansanm gang coalition launched its largest assault yet on Kenscoff, a hillside commune long considered a buffer between gang-controlled territory and the Port-au-Prince suburb of Pétion-Ville. The United Nations confirmed at least 47 people were killed and 22 injured, among them five children. Twenty-two individuals were executed inside a church compound where they had sought shelter. More than 50 others were abducted in what the UN described as one of the largest mass kidnappings Haiti has experienced in recent years.
The attack was not unforeseeable. Kenscoff's Mayor, Jean Massillon, stated that gang reconnaissance drones had been spotted over the town 15 days before the assault. The warning did not produce adequate protection. After the massacre, chief prosecutor Fritz Patterson Dorval acknowledged that eight armoured vehicles were in the area. As the commentary by Sir Ronald Sanders in Kaieteur News notes, armoured vehicles protect no one if they are not positioned where they are needed when gunmen arrive.
A quarter of relentless violence
The Kenscoff massacre occurred against a backdrop of accelerating violence across Haiti. On 25 August, the UN Integrated Office in Haiti reported that between April and June at least 1,408 people were killed and 656 injured. Kidnappings rose from 57 in the previous quarter to 81. Fighting in Cité Soleil and the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac displaced more than 18,000 people during the same period.
The UN documented 796 victims of gang-related rape in those three months: 772 women, 23 girls and one man, ranging in age from ten to seventy-one. Eighty-seven per cent were attacked by more than one perpetrator, in some cases in the presence of children or other relatives. Many victims' homes were subsequently looted and burned.
The same report raises serious concerns about the conduct of security forces. Forty per cent of those killed or injured during the quarter were victims of security operations targeting gangs. Twelve per cent had no gang association, including children struck by bullets or drone explosions. The UN said it had received no information indicating that investigations into those deaths and injuries had been opened.
Force authorised at 5,550 — deployed at roughly 1,000
UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the Kenscoff massacre on 25 August and called for those responsible to be brought to justice through specialised judicial units established with international support. The condemnation was widely noted; the operational gap it failed to close was equally noted.
The UN Security Council authorised a Gang Suppression Force of 5,550 personnel. As of July, approximately 1,000 were in Haiti. Jack Christofides, Special Representative for the Force, told the Security Council that headquarters, rules of engagement, intelligence structures and a first forward operating base had been established, and that regular patrols had begun. Those preparations fall well short of the operational strength required to confront gangs across multiple regions simultaneously.
The force's initial authorisation expires on 30 September. It remains far below authorised strength. Romain Le Cour, head of the Haiti Observatory at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, was direct: "They don't have enough personnel." One thousand personnel cannot simultaneously cover Delmas, Tabarre, Cité Soleil, the Artibonite, Mirebalais and Kenscoff. Gang coalitions exploit that arithmetic, targeting communities where the state presence is already weakest.
Governance crisis underlies the security failure
Monica Juma, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told the Security Council in July that Haiti is facing "a governance crisis, driven by organised crime." She warned that without functioning courts, prisons, police institutions and financial investigations, any security gains would be temporary. A deployed force that recovers territory cannot hold it if Haitian institutions are absent from the ground it clears.
From 16 to 19 August, OAS Secretary-General Albert Ramdin led a high-level delegation to Haiti that included CARICOM Secretary-General Carla Barnett and representatives of the UN, the Pan American Health Organisation and international financial institutions. Ramdin returned with a clear message: the Gang Suppression Force requires more personnel, financing, logistical support and operational capacity, and progress must become "visible and measurable as soon as possible."
Countries with strategic airlift capacity, Sanders argues in his commentary, must help move pledged contingents and their equipment into Haiti. A soldier committed by a government but left at home cannot protect a family in Kenscoff or anywhere else in the country.
OAS council faces a test of intent
The Permanent Council of the OAS was due to consider how the organisation can support Haiti. Sanders writes that the Council must not receive another report only to add it to a growing collection of unfulfilled plans. A programme of action is needed — identifying what will be delivered, by whom and by what date. Commitments of personnel, equipment, airlift capacity and funding should be made public, as should any failures to honour them.
Kenscoff, Sanders concludes, was not a failure of intelligence or of stated intent. The danger was diagnosed, security mechanisms existed and international assistance had been pledged. It was a failure to act with sufficient speed and strength. That failure, as he writes, now has names, bodies and grieving families attached to it.
Source: Kaieteur News